


Unsteady

by Silverheart



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-05
Updated: 2012-05-05
Packaged: 2017-11-04 21:06:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/398197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverheart/pseuds/Silverheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being forced into treachery is still treachery. It's not easy to deal with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unsteady

**Author's Note:**

> I know next to nothing about the comic book Avengers. I'm just writing who I saw in the movie. Also, I could only afford to go to the movie once, so this may not quite fit with the scene there.

He’s himself again. Probably.

No, definitely. He had to believe that. If he didn’t…

God. He will not go there again, not even in memory. He won’t live one more moment in the time when his mind wasn’t his own. He can’t. It will be the end of him. He will collapse from the inside out.

“I tried to kill you.” The words just come out.

Natasha shrugs. “ _Nichevo_.” The Russian word is a slip of stress, and negates her statement. She continues on, frowning at her tell. “You didn’t kill me. That’s what matters.”

He rubs his recently released wrists. It’s a distraction. He feels…unsteady.

Damn. He’s better than this. He needs to be better than this. They aren’t out of this yet.

His fault.

Not going there.

Natasha doesn’t say it because she knows he’s thinking it. She’s there and that’s what he needs. You can’t really help your buddy find his feet. You can be his support while he finds them on his own. And then he is ready to fight at your back again.

“Sorry,” he breathes, closing his eyes.

One lecture on Loki isn’t enough, honestly, but it’s not like she’s going to repeat herself. Slap him, yes. He can almost hear her considering it. She won’t because she had already smacked one thing out of him, and good, today.

Probably today. He doesn’t have a real sense of time over the past few days. Hopefully only days.

Done with this. If he keeps on, it will just be circles and more circles until his thoughts spiral down into a single terrible point of something like memory. Done, damn it.

“It won’t be easy,” Natasha says. Her hand hovers somewhere between motion and stillness; gentleness is not easy for ungentle people. Maybe it’s impossible. “But it’s gone, now.”

“The memory isn’t.” He can’t force it back. He had stood against his own mission. He had killed his own people.

He had tried his damn hardest to kill Natasha, who he trusted and was trusted by like no one else.

“No.” She pauses. “I can’t help you any more than that.” Her eyes slide shut, hiding away some dark thing that flashes behind them.

He surprises himself and does the gentle thing: laying a hand on hers. They sit still like that for a long heartbeat.

Natasha breaks away and throws him a towel from a nearby table. “Clean up. We’re not done.”

**Author's Note:**

> Nichevo= nothing, think nothing of it
> 
> Forgive my attempt to transliterate Russian. It fit.
> 
> I really like this pair. They've got their problems, but they're competent, professional, deadly people and they have a job to do. Not quite sure why I like them so much, but there you go. 
> 
> Clint's trauma would be very hard to deal with. Betrayal, not teenage drama 'betrayal', but real betrayal, is unimaginable for the kind of person he seems to be. To be forced to it and to such an awful degree would be hell. But there's shit going on, so there's little time for self-pity. It stood out to me.


End file.
